This translation of a major document in patristic Christology, the first translation since the nineteenth century, is based upon the modern critical edition of Theodoret’s Greek text. Theodoret was the leading theologian of his time in the Antiochene tradition, and in the Eranistes (written in 447) he offers a lengthy exposition of his Christology, coupled with a refutation of the so-called Monophysite Christology that, despite its condemnation at the General Council held at Chalcedon in 451, survives to this day, having been embraced by several large churches of the East. The “Monophysite” controversy caused a tremendous rift between East and West, and the Eranistes portrays the hostility and the stubborn resistance to the thought of others that afflicted both sides in the conflict.
The Eranistes is written in the form of three dialogues between two characters: Orthodox, who represents Theodoret’s thought, and Eranistes, who is presented as a heretic. In two dialogues Theodoret argues that the Word of God was immutable and impassible in his divine nature, and that Christ experienced change and passion only in his human nature. A third dialogue argues that, in the union of the divinity and humanity in the one person of the Word incarnate, the natures remained unmixed. To bolster his arguments Theodoret incorporates extensive citations, not only from orthodox ecclesiastical writers, but also from the heretic Apollinarius and the suspected Arian, Eusebius of Emesa. The texts of many of these citations are known only from the Eranistes and are therefore important witnesses to the development of patristic Christology.
Critical issues in Antiochene and Alexandrian Christology are broached by Theodoret in the text and are further discussed by the translator in the introduction and notes.
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“Let us think about the angels in the same way, then, when we hear, ‘They see the face of your Father daily.’72 For they do not [76] see the divine substance, which is infinite, unlimited, incomprehensible, and embraces all things, but rather a certain glory that is adapted to their own nature.” (Page 44)
“Although Theodoret had disapproved of Cyril in the past, he nonetheless includes him among the teachers of orthodoxy without comment or qualification.” (Page 8)
“Theodoret’s defense both of the integrity of the incarnate Word’s divinity as well as of the reality of his humanity” (Page 13)
“Here the name of mediator itself reveals divinity and humanity. He was not called a mediator because he was only God, for how could he have mediated between us and God if he had nothing in common with us? But since he was joined to the Father as God with the same substance, and since he was joined to us as a human being because he took from us the form of the slave,24 he has rightly been called a mediator, because he joined diverse realities in himself through the union of the natures, i.e., the divinity and the humanity.” (Page 99)
“Those who call the Lord’s flesh life-giving make life itself mortal with their statement. They should have understood that it is life-giving because of the life united to it. But if, according to what they say, life is mortal, how could the flesh, which is mortal by nature, but becomes life-giving through life, continue to be life-giving?” (Page 262)